In the divine services of the Orthodox Church, the roll call of Jn. with the Old Testament. Why, for example, on the Sunday of Thomas (Antipascha) at Matins is supposed to be such a prokeimenon:

Praise2, i3erusali1me, gdsa, praise2 bg7a of yours2, siw1ne.

Praise, O Jerusalem, the Lord; Praise, O Zion, thy God (Psalm 147:1)?

Because the confession of the Apostle Thomas (read as part of the liturgical reading, i.e. the next day) – "My Lord and my God" (John 20:28) – sounds like an adequate, even mirror-like answer to the call of the Old Testament psalm. The Church, the new Jerusalem, the new Zion, in the person of Thomas, praises its Lord and God. An amazingly subtle sense of the unity of the Old and New Testaments!

The Qumran Discoveries

The Qumran discoveries made after 1947 gave the world numerous first-hand accounts of the aspirations of Palestinian Jews in intertestamental times. True, the Qumran texts acquired such a "pan-Palestinian" and not a narrowly sectarian (be it the Essenes, the so-called Qumranites, or anyone else) reputation only relatively recently, by the end of the 20th century. Accordingly, the understanding of the common material found in the Qumran texts and in the New Testament writings, in particular, in Jn. For example, the understanding of the dualism or opposition of two realities: light and darkness, truth and falsehood, higher and lower, etc.[805] If earlier there was a haste to talk about the borrowing of such ideas by Christians from the Qumranites, now it is more about the fact that in the writings of John, other Christian evangelists of the first Christian generation, and, say, the Qumranites, one should first of all recognize one source, the Old Testament. and one common religious atmosphere[806].

104. The author, circumstances and time of writing Jn.

Beginning with the second century, Church Tradition considers the author of our fourth canonical Gospel to be the Holy Apostle John the Theologian, the son of Zebedee and the brother of St. Paul. Jacob. It is he that the Church recognizes in that beloved disciple of the Lord, or simply "another disciple" (when Peter is spoken of first), of whom Jn. is said in the third person:

And one of His disciples, whom Jesus loved, reclined at the breast of Jesus (John 13:23).

Jesus was followed by Simon Peter and another disciple; but this disciple was known to the high priest, and entered with Jesus into the court of the high priest (John 18:15; see also 20:2-4, 8; 21:7, 20, 23).

One of John's unique testimonies is based on the contemplation of the crucified Christ at the foot of His Cross:

26 And when Jesus saw his mother and the disciple standing there, whom he loved, he said to his mother, "Woman! Behold, thy son. 27 Then he said to the disciple, "Behold, thy mother! And from that time this disciple took Her unto him (John 19:26-27).

At the end, it is directly stated that the Gospel was written by this same disciple: